Best Zendesk Sell Alternatives 2026

Why People Start Looking for Zendesk Sell Alternatives

Zendesk Sell (formerly Base CRM) carved out a niche as a clean, straightforward sales CRM that plays nicely with Zendesk’s support suite. But over the past couple of years, I’ve watched more teams outgrow it than grow into it. The most common complaint I hear: it’s a solid CRM that never quite became a great one.

The real trigger for most switches isn’t a single feature gap — it’s the realization that you’re paying CRM prices for what feels like a feature of the broader Zendesk platform rather than a standalone product.

Why Look for Zendesk Sell Alternatives?

Limited Automation at Lower Tiers

Zendesk Sell’s Task Player and basic workflow automations are fine for small teams, but anything meaningful — like multi-step sequences or conditional branching — requires the Growth plan ($55/user/month) or higher. Compare that to Pipedrive or Freshsales, where you get solid automation starting around $29/user/month, and you start to see why teams feel squeezed.

Pricing That Doesn’t Match Feature Depth

Here’s the math that frustrates people. Zendesk Sell’s Team plan costs $19/user/month, but it’s genuinely bare-bones: 2GB document storage, no custom sales reports, no email sequences. To get features that competitors include at similar price points, you need the Growth tier at $55/user/month. A 10-person sales team on Growth is paying $550/month — and still won’t have the reporting depth of Salesforce’s $25/user Starter Suite.

The Zendesk Ecosystem Lock-In Problem

Zendesk Sell’s strongest selling point — its native integration with Zendesk Support — is also its biggest limitation. If you’re already using Zendesk for customer service, the integration is genuinely useful. But if you’re not? You’re paying for a CRM that was designed to complement a support tool you don’t use, and the standalone feature set doesn’t justify the cost.

Weak Marketing Features

Zendesk Sell has essentially zero marketing capabilities. No landing pages, no forms, no email marketing, no lead capture tools. Every lead has to come from somewhere else. Teams that want any marketing-to-sales alignment end up buying additional tools, which adds cost and complexity.

Reporting Limitations

Even on the Professional plan ($115/user/month), Zendesk Sell’s reporting feels limited compared to what you’d get from Salesforce, HubSpot, or even Zoho CRM at a fraction of the cost. Custom report building is possible but clunky, and cross-object reporting is essentially non-existent without workarounds.

Freshsales

Best for: Teams wanting a similar UI with better pricing and built-in phone

Freshsales is the alternative I recommend most often to Zendesk Sell users, and for good reason: it has a similar design philosophy (clean, sales-focused, easy to learn) but delivers more value at every price point.

The biggest difference you’ll notice immediately is the built-in phone system. Freshsales includes a native dialer with call recording, local and toll-free numbers, and voicemail drops starting from the Growth plan at $9/user/month. With Zendesk Sell, you get voice functionality too, but the overall package at that price tier is far less generous. Freshsales also includes Freddy AI, which provides lead scoring and deal insights — features that Zendesk Sell reserves for higher tiers or doesn’t offer at all.

Where Freshsales falls short is advanced reporting and analytics. If you’re on Zendesk Sell’s Professional tier and rely on its custom reports, you might find Freshsales’ reporting a step behind, especially for complex multi-pipeline analytics. The free plan is also limited to 3 users, which won’t work for larger teams testing the waters.

Pricing is straightforward: free for up to 3 users, then $9/user/month (Growth), $39/user/month (Pro), or $59/user/month (Enterprise). Most teams switching from Zendesk Sell land comfortably on the Growth or Pro plan and save 30-50% per user.

See our Zendesk Sell vs Freshsales comparison

Read our full Freshsales review

HubSpot CRM

Best for: Teams that need strong marketing-to-sales alignment

If your reason for leaving Zendesk Sell is “we need marketing tools too,” HubSpot is the obvious answer. The free CRM is genuinely useful — not a trial, not a teaser, but an actual CRM that supports unlimited users and up to 1,000,000 contact records. I’ve seen 15-person teams run their entire sales operation on HubSpot Free for over a year.

The real advantage over Zendesk Sell is the marketing layer. Even on the free tier, you get forms, email marketing (up to 2,000 sends/month), and a basic landing page builder. On Zendesk Sell, you’d need to buy and integrate separate tools for all of that. HubSpot’s Sales Hub Starter ($15/user/month) gives you email sequences, meeting scheduling, and pipeline automation — features that require Zendesk Sell’s $55/user Growth plan.

The honest downside: HubSpot’s pricing escalates sharply once you outgrow Starter. Sales Hub Professional jumps to $90/user/month, and if you add Marketing Hub Professional ($800/month for the platform plus $45/month per additional seat), you’re looking at serious spend. There’s also the marketing contacts pricing model — if you have 10,000 marketing contacts, you’re paying significantly more than for sales contacts alone.

HubSpot’s interface is also busier than Zendesk Sell’s. Where Zendesk Sell keeps things minimal (sometimes to a fault), HubSpot packs a lot onto every screen. Reps who loved Zendesk Sell’s simplicity sometimes find HubSpot overwhelming in the first few weeks.

For pricing, start with Free and evaluate whether Starter ($15/user/month) meets your needs before committing to Professional. Many teams find Starter covers 80% of what they need.

See our Zendesk Sell vs HubSpot comparison

Read our full HubSpot review

Pipedrive

Best for: Sales-focused teams that want visual pipeline management

Pipedrive and Zendesk Sell attract similar buyers: sales teams that want a CRM built for selling, not for IT departments. But Pipedrive wins on execution in almost every area that matters to salespeople.

The visual pipeline is where Pipedrive shines brightest. You can drag deals between stages, see deal values and ages at a glance, and set up rotting indicators when deals stall. Zendesk Sell has pipeline views too, but Pipedrive’s feel more intuitive and are more configurable. You can set up multiple pipelines with different stages, probability weightings, and automation triggers — all from the Advanced plan at $29/user/month.

Pipedrive’s automation engine is also more capable than Zendesk Sell’s at comparable price points. The Advanced tier lets you build workflow automations with triggers, conditions, and actions — things like “when a deal moves to Negotiation, create a task, send an email template, and notify the manager.” On Zendesk Sell, equivalent automation requires the $55/user Growth plan.

The limitation to flag: Pipedrive has no customer support or ticketing features whatsoever. If you’re currently using Zendesk Sell specifically because it connects to Zendesk Support, Pipedrive won’t replicate that. You’d need to integrate with a separate helpdesk tool. Also, Pipedrive’s reporting, while improved, still doesn’t match what you’d get from Salesforce or HubSpot at higher tiers.

The mobile app is a strong point — Pipedrive’s mobile experience includes offline access and a route planning feature for field sales reps that’s genuinely useful and something Zendesk Sell doesn’t offer.

Pricing: Essential ($14/user/month), Advanced ($29/user/month), Professional ($49/user/month), Power ($64/user/month), Enterprise ($99/user/month). Most Zendesk Sell switchers fit the Advanced plan well.

See our Zendesk Sell vs Pipedrive comparison

Read our full Pipedrive review

Zoho CRM

Best for: Budget-conscious teams that want an all-in-one business platform

Zoho CRM is what I recommend when teams tell me “we want to spend less and get more.” It’s not the prettiest CRM, and setup takes longer than Zendesk Sell, but the value proposition is hard to argue with.

The Standard plan at $14/user/month includes custom reports, email insights, workflow automation (up to 10 rules), and scoring rules. On Zendesk Sell, you’d need to be on the $55/user Growth plan to get comparable functionality. The math speaks for itself: a 10-person team saves $410/month moving from Zendesk Sell Growth to Zoho CRM Standard.

What makes Zoho particularly compelling is the ecosystem. Zoho offers 50+ business applications — Zoho Desk (helpdesk), Zoho Books (accounting), Zoho Projects (project management), Zoho Campaigns (email marketing) — and they all integrate natively. If you’re leaving Zendesk Sell partly because it lacks marketing tools or doesn’t connect to your other business systems, Zoho’s ecosystem fills those gaps without third-party integrations.

The Canvas design studio is a unique feature worth mentioning. It lets you redesign any CRM view — list views, record detail pages, pipeline cards — using a drag-and-drop designer. If Zendesk Sell’s interface felt too rigid, Canvas gives you control that most CRMs at this price point simply don’t offer.

The honest trade-off: Zoho’s interface is more cluttered and the configuration options can be overwhelming. Where Zendesk Sell takes 30 minutes to set up, Zoho CRM might take 2-3 days to configure properly. The mobile app is functional but not as polished as Zendesk Sell’s or Pipedrive’s. And the sheer number of Zoho products can create confusion — figuring out which Zoho apps you actually need takes some research.

Pricing: Free for 3 users, Standard ($14/user/month), Professional ($23/user/month), Enterprise ($40/user/month), Ultimate ($52/user/month). The Zoho One bundle ($35/user/month for all 50+ apps) is worth evaluating if you’d use more than 3-4 Zoho products.

See our Zendesk Sell vs Zoho CRM comparison

Read our full Zoho CRM review

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Best for: Growing companies that will need enterprise-grade customization

Salesforce is overkill for many teams leaving Zendesk Sell, and I want to be upfront about that. But if you’re switching because you’ve hit Zendesk Sell’s ceiling — you need custom objects, complex approval workflows, territory management, or CPQ — Salesforce is the only realistic option that won’t have you switching again in two years.

The customization gap between Zendesk Sell and Salesforce is enormous. Zendesk Sell gives you some custom fields and basic workflow rules. Salesforce lets you build entirely custom data models, create multi-step approval processes, design page layouts per user profile, and write custom logic with Flow Builder (or Apex code). If you’ve ever thought “I wish Zendesk Sell could do X,” Salesforce can almost certainly do X — plus Y and Z.

Reporting is the other major upgrade. Salesforce’s report builder lets you create cross-object reports, matrix reports, and joined reports that pull from multiple data sources. You can build dashboards that update in real-time and share them with specific teams or roles. Zendesk Sell’s reporting feels like a prototype by comparison.

But the costs are real. The Starter Suite at $25/user/month is stripped down — it’ll feel like a lateral move from Zendesk Sell, not an upgrade. Most teams need Professional ($80/user/month) to access the features that justify the switch. Factor in implementation costs too: even a basic Salesforce setup typically takes 2-4 weeks with a consultant, and a more customized deployment can run 6-8 weeks. Budget $5,000-$15,000 for implementation on top of license costs.

I wouldn’t recommend Salesforce for teams under 10 people unless you have complex sales processes that genuinely require it. For everyone else, one of the other alternatives on this list will deliver better value.

See our Zendesk Sell vs Salesforce comparison

Read our full Salesforce review

ServiceTitan

Best for: Field service businesses that need scheduling, dispatch, and CRM in one

This one’s for a specific audience. If you’re running a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, or other field service business and you’ve been trying to make Zendesk Sell work as your CRM, ServiceTitan is built specifically for you — and the difference is night and day.

ServiceTitan combines CRM functionality with dispatch scheduling, job costing, technician tracking, invoicing, and payment processing in a single platform. Instead of managing customer relationships in Zendesk Sell and then switching to separate tools for scheduling, dispatch, and billing, everything lives in one place. Technicians see their full schedule, customer history, and job details on a single mobile app. They can create invoices on-site and collect payment before leaving.

The real-time GPS tracking and technician performance analytics are particularly valuable. You can see where every tech is, how long jobs take compared to estimates, and which technicians generate the most revenue per call. This kind of operational intelligence is something a general-purpose CRM like Zendesk Sell simply can’t provide.

The limitations are straightforward: ServiceTitan only makes sense for service businesses. It’s not a general-purpose CRM. If you sell software, consulting, or anything that doesn’t involve dispatching technicians to customer locations, ServiceTitan isn’t for you. The pricing is also opaque — you have to request a custom quote, but based on what I’ve seen from clients, expect to start around $245/month for small teams. Larger operations can pay significantly more. The implementation is also more involved than switching between general CRMs, typically taking 4-6 weeks.

See our Zendesk Sell vs ServiceTitan comparison

Read our full ServiceTitan review

Quick Comparison Table

Tool	Best For	Starting Price	Free Plan
Freshsales	Similar UI, better pricing, built-in phone	$9/user/month	Yes (3 users)
HubSpot CRM	Marketing-to-sales alignment	$15/user/month (Starter)	Yes (unlimited users)
Pipedrive	Visual pipeline management for sales teams	$14/user/month	No (14-day trial)
Zoho CRM	Budget-conscious teams wanting an all-in-one platform	$14/user/month	Yes (3 users)
Salesforce Sales Cloud	Enterprise customization and scalability	$25/user/month (Starter)	No (30-day trial)
ServiceTitan	Field service businesses with dispatch needs	~$245/month (custom quote)	No

How to Choose

If you want the simplest transition: Go with Freshsales. The UI philosophy is closest to Zendesk Sell, the learning curve is minimal, and your team will be productive within days. The price drop alone often justifies the switch.

If marketing alignment is your priority: HubSpot is the clear winner. Start with the free CRM, add Sales Hub Starter if you need sequences and automation, and evaluate whether you need Marketing Hub separately. Just watch the pricing once you scale past Starter.

If your sales team drives the decision: Pipedrive. Salespeople tend to love it because it was designed for how they actually work — visual pipelines, activity-based selling, and a mobile app that’s genuinely useful in the field.

If budget matters most: Zoho CRM. Dollar for dollar, no CRM delivers more features at this price point. Be prepared to invest more time in setup and training, but the long-term savings are substantial.

If you’re outgrowing every CRM you try: Salesforce. It’s more expensive and more complex, but you won’t outgrow it. Only choose this if you’ve genuinely hit the limits of simpler tools and need customization that other platforms can’t provide.

If you run a field service company: ServiceTitan. Stop trying to make a general-purpose CRM work for dispatch-heavy operations. The purpose-built approach saves more time than any amount of Zendesk Sell customization.

Switching Tips

Export Your Data First

Zendesk Sell lets you export contacts, leads, and deals as CSV files. Do a full export before you start your migration — not after. Go to Settings > Data > Export and pull everything: contacts, leads, deals, notes, and call logs. Notes and call logs are the ones people forget, and they’re often the hardest to recreate.

Plan for 1-2 Weeks of Overlap

Don’t hard-cut from Zendesk Sell on a Friday and launch a new CRM on Monday. Run both systems in parallel for at least a week. This gives your team time to verify that data migrated correctly and that no active deals fell through the cracks. Most CRM subscriptions are monthly — one extra month of Zendesk Sell is cheap insurance.

Map Your Fields Before Importing

Every CRM handles custom fields differently. Before you import your Zendesk Sell data into a new platform, create all your custom fields in the destination CRM first. Then map each Zendesk Sell field to its equivalent. A spreadsheet with three columns — Zendesk Sell Field, New CRM Field, Data Type — saves hours of cleanup later.

Watch Out for Integration Dependencies

If you’re using Zendesk Sell’s native integration with Zendesk Support, switching CRMs means you’ll need a new support integration too. Check whether your new CRM has a native Zendesk Support integration (HubSpot and Salesforce do, Pipedrive has a third-party one) or whether you’ll need to build something with Zapier or a similar tool.

Retrain on Workflows, Not Just Navigation

The biggest migration mistake I see is showing people where buttons are in the new CRM without rebuilding their actual workflows. Sit down with your team and walk through their daily process: “Here’s how you log a call. Here’s how you move a deal forward. Here’s how you check your pipeline.” Map the workflow, not just the interface.

Set a Data Cutoff Date

Pick a date and tell the team: “After March 15, all new activity goes in the new CRM only.” Stragglers who keep updating Zendesk Sell for weeks after the migration create data synchronization nightmares. Be firm about the cutoff.

---

Disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you. This helps us keep the site running and produce quality content.